Upgrading OS and MBA performance life

[abz1981]

Hey all

Just like to gather some thoughts and view points. Some people say the best way to get the maximum of your MBA life is to keep the original OS. The thought behind it, is if the original OS is working fine for you, then why upgrade it and, due to the fact you are still using the original OS built for your MBA you will get the maximum out of it. What are other peoples thoughts? I am still currently using Lion on my MBA and been happy with it and no issues at all.

 

[Mike in Kansas]

Hey all

Just like to gather some thoughts and view points. Some people say the best way to get the maximum of your MBA life is to keep the original OS. The thought behind it, is if the original OS is working fine for you, then why upgrade it and, due to the fact you are still using the original OS built for your MBA you will get the maximum out of it. What are other peoples thoughts? I am still currently using Lion on my MBA and been happy with it and no issues at all.

I have never heard that position, and it honestly doesn't make much sense. Each time a new OS comes out, in addition to all the new features it also fixes issues that the prior OS had, which sometimes are battery life issues.

The good thing about upgrading OS's on your computer versus on your iPhone is that you can easily roll back if you don't like it. Before you update your OS, make sure you have a complete bootable clone of your HDD on an external drive (you should have this anyway as it's good backup practice). You can use Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper to do this. Once you've verified that your external cloned drive is bootable, install the new OS on your machine. If you find you don't like it, just clone the external hard drive back to your internal hard drive and you are right back go where you were before upgrading. Simple as that.

 

[Mrbobb]

Is been routinely discussed here, search for "longevity" and "air lasts."

I am in that school. Don't upgrade unless there is a need to.

Yes, newer OS fixes some issues, BUT, my former life as developer tells me, all software have bugs, no software are completely free of bugs, in real life, one should only worry about bugs that affects you. 9 out of 10 times, by my own experience, I have a problem, is obviously the OS, then I go, oh the next update will fix it, I update, and my problem still there. Fine it fixes "other" problems but I don't care about those problems, I only care about my problem.

But true that, as Mike says, OSX can be "roll back." I did this quite often with Windows. Windows, the way is designed always leave "stuff" behind even after one has uninstalled something. Me, I pull out my last known-to-be-good image and BAM am back like EXACTLY before. Same can be done to OSX.

Now that was the OS, what about all the Apps? Same thing, but worse, IMO. Apps developers are always throwing you new features, features that take more juice to execute, more room of your precious SSD. DO YOU NEED IT? So if you subscribe to my school, always keep all IMG files of your Apps, in case you need to GO-BACK.

For completeness of this discussion, there is a THIRD category: Ever increased complexity web pages. Example: Unfortunately I used FLASH, the sites I frequent use Flash, but notice newer versions of Flash take advantage of newer GPU accelerators. Now that's fine and dandy, but what if I don't have the latest GPU? But the content providers don't care, they just care that, oh the new Flash will let me do this, so BAM, that's what I will put out there because I want my page to look new-snazzy. And we users don't have a choice if we want to watch the new content, MUST update. This third category is the one that will probably contribute more to premature obsolescence. They call it progress, at our expense.

 

[abz1981]

I have never heard that position, and it honestly doesn't make much sense. Each time a new OS comes out, in addition to all the new features it also fixes issues that the prior OS had, which sometimes are battery life issues.

The good thing about upgrading OS's on your computer versus on your iPhone is that you can easily roll back if you don't like it. Before you update your OS, make sure you have a complete bootable clone of your HDD on an external drive (you should have this anyway as it's good backup practice). You can use Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper to do this. Once you've verified that your external cloned drive is bootable, install the new OS on your machine. If you find you don't like it, just clone the external hard drive back to your internal hard drive and you are right back go where you were before upgrading. Simple as that.

Hey thanks mike and mr. I guess both you are right and thanks for your useful post. I have never used copy cloner or super super. Don't know how easy or hard it is to use. But I will give that a shot I guess and give maverick a go.

 

[Mrbobb]

Hey thanks mike and mr. I guess both you are right and thanks for your useful post. I have never used copy cloner or super super. Don't know how easy or hard it is to use. But I will give that a shot I guess and give maverick a go.

I use Carbon copy.

As posted, this saved me countless time in Windows. In OSX, they say no virus, malware? OK so a few months ago, BAM my Air login screen shows my usual single logging account AND the USER account enabled. WOW! Who did that???? No-no-no-no-no. I didn't care, I immediately pulled out my image backup and am back to my comfort cave within 15 minutes. Taking no chances, don't want to spend time finding out why.

 

[IJBrekke]

In my experience computers seem to run best on the OS shipped with the product. I upgraded my 11" MBA to Lion when it came out and battery life, performance, and even boot time got much worse. I've been on Snow Leopard ever since and it continues to run like a champ.

 

[Boyd01]

I never updated my 13" 2011 MBA from 10.7.4 - everything worked fine and I didn't want to deal with possible issues with the pro applications I run (Logic, Final Cut, etc), especially since some of them were old versions. Was always very happy with it

Got a 2013 MBA over the summer and have skipped all the updates so far. Again.... it ain't broke, so I ain't fixin' it.

 

[robvas]

Mavericks will bring battery life improvements.

But the main thing is if you don't upgrade the OS eventually you won' the able to upgrade to the latests versions of Safari, iTunes, and other things like Chrome/Firefox